Breaking Down of the Cell Walls

Everybody likes watching people in the bus. You came in a couple of stops after me, dressed up nice and decent, ready for the office. You sat down next to another girl, not far from me, with the telephone already on the ear.

Πως είσαι, μπαμπά;
...
Όχι καλά;
...
Τι εννοείς όχι καλά;

(How are you papa?
...
Not good?
...
What do you mean, not good?)

You listened for a long time. When you talked again, I made a conscious effort to not listen any more. I started to listen to the lady on my other side who talked with her husband about taxi drivers or shopping or something. When I looked in your direction again a while later, you had put the phone down. You were sitting there with a little line between your eyes, very upright and still you seemed to be hunched down. You looked out of the window, probably you were wondering what you could do now, here, sitting in the bus. No line of movement, nothing you can do now, even if there was something you could do. I felt so sorry, but there was no way I could have helped either. There are those moments when we are glued into it, caught in this life. Ισόβια (lifetime, I'd seen this word printed on a leaflet from the bank where I was this morning, they were referring to pension funds).

There are so many people in the tight space of this city, too close together. Everybody is developing a thick skin, many are getting aggressive once you get too close to them (and then many get very friendly once you get close to them). Sometimes there is something in the air that makes these borders between the minds easier to break down, at least for a short see-through. Yesterday evening I had the feeling that one of those short windows was coming.

Looks like a geek to me

This morning on the way to the bus, I passed by a little street with a very narrow sidewalk. There was a painter, putting white paint all over a freshly renovated shop. I left the sidewalk, walked around the parked cars and continued on the street to avoid getting paint on me. When I was passing on the height of the shop, the painter called out to me, can I ask you a question? I sometimes get asked for the road (strange enough), so I stopped and went closer. He showed me his mobile phone and said: "There was this strange message about the SIM card on the phone, and now look what it does." He gave me the phone, it read "Please insert SIM card." I couldn't really help him, but it struck me as funny that he spotted me as a geek from 10 meters far. (This part is what I was planning to post till I came into the bus. See, the tissue between the entities living in this city sometimes breaks down in multiple ways. It was in the air this morning I would say.)

Life in Athens (Greece) for a foreigner from the other side of the mountains.
And with an interest in digital life and the feeling of change in a big city.
Multilingual English - German - Greek.Main blog page